Shadow Of A Doubt
by AliaofTwoWorlds
Summary: Set in late season 3. After unexplainably blacking out, Dean and Sam wake up and find themselves in an unfamiliar town, where they spend only a few minutes before being kidnapped by people who seem to know them. Continuation of an idea touched on in Hindsight, but not a sequel. Will contain some Destiel, and AU/ish ideas.
1. Chapter 1

I'm alive, which I have to say at the beginning of pretty much every story, of course. I know, I never update often enough or write enough. I really, truly mean to, but I just don't end up doing it. For any of you who are reading it, I am at some point going to continue Framing Innocence, but since so much of it was negated by season 9 so far, and because season 9 has given me some new ideas, I need to redo some of what I've already written and need to revamp my planned out story chapters. Now onto this one: If you've read my story called Hindsight, you will have an idea of what's happening here. I just really love the idea of younger Dean and Sam getting to interact with the people featured in this story, and I won't say any more for those of you who don't know what I'm talking about. Enjoy!

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><p>Everything is fuzzy. The world seems to be floating in a white fog, or maybe the fog is just filling his mind. After a moment of floating pleasantly in the fog, he begins to narrow down his thoughts, and remembers that he has a body. He focuses on that, and is surprised to find that nothing hurts, nothing feels funny. Huh. Painless floating isn't what usually follows waking through a fog of confusion. He supposes he could be in the hospital, drugs masking the pain and making his mind fuzzy.<p>

He focuses on opening his eyes, and to his surprise, it is an easy task. He is also decidedly not in a hospital. The world in front of him is a bright sea of green for a moment, and then his eyes adjust to see a modest city park, two or three people milling around on the grass and a few walking by on the nearby sidewalks.

He turns his head to the side and feels a rough, uneven surface behind his head. A tree. He seems to be sitting on the ground, leaning against a tree.

Turning further, he catches a glimpse of worn leather, and with it comes the familiar smell of leather and metal. His mind, rapidly clearing, forms a picture of his brother. _Dean_.

All at once, the fog clears, and his mind is filled with questions instead. He has no idea where they are, or how they got here, or what the hell is happening. Passersby don't seem to have found the two men sitting below a tree, apparently napping, strange. Nobody is giving them a second glance.

He sits up straighter, leaning further from the tree, and turns to look at his brother. Dean is leaning against the tree next to him just as he was, and blinking slowly at the sky in a way that suggests he woke up just seconds after Sam.

"Dean." His voice comes out normally, his throat isn't dry. They can't have been sitting here for long.

"Dean," Sam repeats, reaching out to place a hand carefully on his brother's shoulder. Dean's head turns slightly toward him, and he blinks a few times and focuses slowly on Sam's face.

"Sam?" he says drowsily, then starts violently and sits up straighter, looking around wildly. "What the hell…?"

"No idea," Sam says. "You okay?"

Dean pauses a moment to evaluate. "Yeah, fine. You?"

"I'm good." There's a moment's pause while they both stand up, brushing grass off of their jeans and looking around.

"Dude," Dean says, "where the hell are we?"

Sam shrugs. "Dunno. But Dean," he pauses and Dean turns to face him again. "What—do you know what we were doing before this?"

Dean's eyebrows draw together, and he thinks for a moment. "Not a clue. You remember anything?"

Sam shakes his head. "Nothing. You think it's some sort of trap? Demons maybe?"

"Yeah, maybe. Seems a little fluffy and nice for them, though, don't you think? Wouldn't think if it was demons we'd wake up in a nice park with memory loss. More like chained up in a dungeon with concussions."

"So what? How the hell did we get here, and what do we do?"

Dean glances over across the street at a bustling day club. A sign over the front just says "Angie's." There are a few lively-looking people milling around outside and a fairly steady stream going in and out. "Well, first thing's first, find out where we are." He turns and heads over toward the club.

Sam rolls his eyes—as confused and lost as they are, he's sure Dean won't pass up the opportunity to flirt with a few local women, claiming, of course, that it is crucial to 'getting a feel for the town.'

As they approach the road, a car passes by ahead of them. Dean, already crossing to the club, doesn't seem to notice, but Sam stares after it. It was very sleek, a shining silver-grey color, with low, rounded headlights unlike any he's ever seen before, and a compacted shape that seemed almost futuristic. It was possible it was a newer model of some car he just hasn't seen before, and turning back, he sees that Dean is already across the street and entering the club. Forgetting the strange car, he jogs across the road and into the club after his brother.

The inside of the club is what he might have expected. There are maybe twenty or thirty people scattered inside, all dressed reasonably well, though again he notes some strange fashions and hairstyles. Maybe this town is just into odd trends.

He spots Dean in a cleared area midway toward a small stage, where four young women wearing matching outfits are dancing to the music that's blaring through the club's speakers. It's not a song he recognizes, but then again, in the Impala with Dean he doesn't exactly get a lot of exposure to popular music. He notices that the attention of most of the club's patrons is on the girls, in fact, and supposes that they must be somewhat well known, at least locally.

Sam approaches his brother, but before he can ask whether Dean plans on gathering any info or just wants to stare at some dancing girls, the older brother grabs his arm and directs his attention to the stage.

"Check it out," Dean says, grinning, but his expression is more impressed than his usual brand of lecherous. "Not bad."

"Dean, you're disgusting. You into pedophilia now?" He's exaggerating, but not by too much. The oldest of the girls on stage looks to be in her early twenties, and the youngest can't be much older than nineteen.

"I was talking about the performance, dumbass," Dean says, elbowing Sam. "I prefer my ladies be older. Usually means they're more _experienced_. Really know what to do."

"Dude. Gross." But Sam is focusing on the girls performing now. It takes him a few moments to make out the moving mouths and headsets, but he realizes that they're not just dancing to the song, they're the ones singing it. He raises his eyebrows slightly. He doesn't care too much for the song, but has to admit, the girls are singing in perfect harmony, and even as they twirl and move, their voices don't waver. Maybe it's a recording of them, and they're just lip-synching.

Then, as he watches, the song goes into its last repeat of the chorus, and in formation, one of the girls lifts another over her head easily, where she contorts like a gymnast into an impossible-looking position. The other two, two beats later, flip gracefully backward onto their hands, spin in perfect unison, and just as the song ends, somersault back to finish in showy poses.

"Wow," Sam says, his voice lost in the applause of the clubgoers. The girls on stage smile gratefully and confidently, and then move forward to take the tips being offered by the people on the floor. Sam makes a face of appreciation, _if you've got the talent, use it_, and goes to turn to Dean, but before he can, he catches the eye of one of the dancers.

The girl's gaze settles on him for a second, passes over him, and then suddenly snaps back to his face. Her smile falters and her gaze moves from him to Dean, standing next to him, at whom she stares for at least a full ten seconds, before looking back to Sam. Her expression by now has morphed into something almost resembling horror.

Then, as if noticing that she is staring, she snaps the smile back on her face and turns back to the crowd, but Sam sees her sharply grab the wrist of one of her fellow dancers, then lean and whisper something to her. The other girl's eyes widen, and then she moves to the side and surreptitiously glances over at Sam and Dean with a similar expression of confusion and terror.

Suddenly filled with an intense foreboding, Sam snatches Dean's arm tightly, ignoring his brother's yelp of protest, and drags him backward out of the club. When they get outside, Sam leads Dean around the next corner and onto the sidewalk that runs between a brick building and a narrow, deserted side street.

Dean looks at first as though he might yell at Sam, but he must see something in his brother's face, because his expression morphs to one of concern and he asks, "what is it? You okay? What was that about?"

Sam glances to either side, knowing that they're more exposed than he would like. "Did you see the way that girl looked at us?"

Dean raises an eyebrow. "What, Sam, you afraid of chicks looking at you now?" At Sam's glare, he raises his hands defensively. "I wasn't watching them, I was looking across the floor. Why? She look funny to you?"

"No, man, she _recognized _us. And not in a friendly way."

Dean glanced back. "I've never seen any of those girls before."

"Neither have I. Which means either we met them in the last… however long we can't remember, or they don't know us, but they know _of _us."

Dean catches onto his meaning immediately, and his gaze sharpens as he glances around once more. "You think they might have been monsters of some kind? Vamps, shifters?"

"Something, maybe," Sam says, once again looking around nervously. He's sure those girls had recognized them and were now following them. The street they are on is narrow, but there are few obstacles that one could hide behind, and it is open enough that no one should be able to sneak up on them. Still, he can't shake the feeling that the girls from the club are watching them right now.

Dean opens his mouth to say something else, but there is a slight rustling noise from above them, and two of the girls from the club drop down on the side of the brothers.

Sam whirls in time to avoid the arm of the first girl, but Dean, who was facing away from the girl who dropped behind him, can't avoid the butt of the gun that comes across the back of his head, and out of the corner of his eye, Sam sees his brother drop.

The nearer of the two girls to Sam is fast, and she is already kicking out at him. He manages to duck out of the way, but she turns and kicks again at one of his ankles, and he reels backward, his right shoulder crashing into the sharp metal edge of the street sign mounted on the building from which the girls had evidently been watching him and Dean.

He barely feels the pain as the girl that hit Dean enters the fight, moving toward him quickly. He lunges toward her, hoping to grab the arm coming toward him and hopefully overpower her. The girls are quick and skilled, and it's two against one, but they are also thin and light. He may be able to win with the sheer advantage of weight.

In the second it takes him to move, however, the first girl has again closed the space between them, and as he takes one step forward, a sharp elbow rams into his upper back with hard force, forcing him to drop to one knee. Then something solid hits the back of his head, and the world goes dark.


	2. Chapter 2

Hey, so just before I start this chapter, just wanted to say that I'm experimenting with writing in the present tense, and I don't actually really like it, I have to force myself to actually remember to put things into it (and often end up writing two or three sentences before I realize that it was all in the past tense). But I want to at least be able to do it, so this came out of that. Also, I know I said at the beginning of the last chapter that this comes partially from something I touched on in Heaven Forbidden. But if you haven't read that and you haven't figured out what's happening here yet, don't go read it, or you'll spoil some of the surprise! That said, by the end of this chapter, you may very well have figured out the 'surprise.' I don't think I'm that good at subtlety. Oh, and one last thing, sorry if any of you got two notifications at the same time about this story, I don't know exactly how the notifications work, but when I uploaded this chapter I also re-uploaded the last one because I noticed one little spelling mistake that I then fixed.

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><p>This time, waking is distinctly more painful. The two places Sam was hit are throbbing in time with his heartbeat, and the shoulder that crashed into the edge of a sign aches.<p>

They're in semidarkness this time, and as Sam groans quietly and lifts his head, he can see that the room they're in is rectangular, maybe 15 feet across. He's sitting against the wall with his hands above his head; an experimental yank shows his wrists are locked in heavy metal shackles.

There's a low "Sam?" from a few feet away, and turning, Sam makes out the silhouette of his brother, similarly chained and sitting against the wall adjacent to his. "Sammy? You okay?" Dean asks.

Sam grunts an affirmative and tries to shift to a slightly more comfortable position to ease the strain on his hurt shoulder. "What was that earlier about waking up chained in a dungeon?"

Dean's frustrated chuckle assures Sam that his brother is okay. He hears Dean pulling on his chains as well. "So any idea what our dancer friends are?" Sam ventures. "You mentioned it earlier, but I'm guessing not vamps, since they were out there in broad daylight at that club."

"Yeah, and shifters ain't exactly the pack-hunting kind. I'm guessing our best bet is demons," Dean says.

"Great," Sam says, "so what now?"

"These things are pretty sturdy," says Dean after a minute, and Sam can hear him pulling on the cuffs again. "But I bet I could get them open if I had some kind of pick."

"Anything within reach?" Sam asks skeptically. He wants out as much as Dean, but the chains connected to the shackles aren't long, and sitting down, Sam bets he could maybe, at most, touch the top of his own head. It's possible they could work themselves into a standing position and maybe reach their pockets, but he'd bet everything he had that those girls at least patted them down before chaining them up.

He hears Dean shifting in place, possibly thinking the same thing as Sam. "If I can just get standing a bit, I—"

The rest of Dean's sentence dies in the creaking sound of a metal door opening, echoing around the chamber they're in. Then suddenly a row of lights in the ceiling flicks on. Sam squints against the unexpected brightness.

When his eyes adjust, he looks to his side at where Dean is chained. Dean's legs are bent, he had obviously been about to try and stand, and his whole body is coiled with tension. And although he sounded fine earlier, Sam is still relieved to be able to see that his brother is uninjured.

He can now also see the room they're in. There are multiple sets of chains like his own along the wall, and one on the floor in the middle of the room, in what he can see now is an enormous devil's trap, taking up most of the floor. His brows furrow. What kind of demons keep people in a room with a devil's trap in it?

There are quiet footsteps on the other side of the wall across from Dean, and then suddenly the wall itself slides forward and splits apart, revealing the same two girls who attacked Sam and Dean earlier.

Sam stiffens and can practically feel Dean doing the same even from across the room. The two girls step forward, and in doing so move into the confines of the devil's trap on the floor. Sam's eyes flick between their faces and their feet, wondering what the hell is going on.

The older-looking of the two girls, with short-cropped hair, stays back while the other moves forward, toward Sam. He tenses even further as she approaches him. Dean growls a warning.

The girl stops a couple feet from Sam, just inside the edge of the trap. Without really thinking, Sam looks up at her and says "_Christo_" forcefully.

She blinks, clearly surprised, but her eyes don't turn black, she doesn't flinch away from him. She stands still for a moment more, then says quietly, "We're not demons." Her tone suggests she finds the very idea absurd, and possibly a bit… disgusting.

_Hunters,_ Sam thinks, _are they hunters? _Nothing else makes sense. Who else would have a room with a devil's trap on the floor, and be able to ambush and take down two skilled hunters so quickly? But then, what was this? Another Gordon Walker? Were these girls convinced Sam and Dean were some sort of supernatural freaks who needed to be stopped? _Great, _Sam thinks, _because we really needed more people against us.._

The girl in front of him steps outside the devil's trap, now extremely close, and Sam shifts uncomfortably. "Hey," Dean barks from across the room.

She ignores him and suddenly crouches down, eye level with Sam. She reaches a hand toward his face and he instinctively flinches a bit to the side. "Don't touch him!" Dean yells.

The girls pauses, cringes slightly, and then moves forward again, ignoring Dean. "Sorry," she says, "can I…?" She touches the side of Sam's head lightly, pressing for him to turn his head further, then slides her hand into his hair carefully. Her touch is surprisingly gentle and reminds him a bit of Dean's. She lightly runs her fingers across the lump on the back of Sam's head where she hit him earlier, and he hisses.

Dean gives a frustrated, protective growl, and Sam hears him yank on the chains holding him to the wall. "Sorry," the girl says again, the pulls her hand back and reaches into her jacket to withdraw a metal key. She rises a bit out of her crouch and pulls on Sam's shackles. There is the sound of metal clinking on metal, and suddenly Sam's hands are freed. He drops them into his lap and flexes his hands a few times, trying to return blood flow.

The girl crouches before him once again and puts a hand under his elbow, gently helping him stand. Sam is utterly confused by the girl's sudden apparent kindness and gentleness, but still unsettled by this entire situation. Nothing makes sense, and though he remembers venturing into the club, then later being attacked, he still can't recall anything before waking up in that park, and can't help but feel these strange girls have something to do with it all.

He waits for the girl to go and free Dean as well, but she takes his arm and begins steering him toward the door. Halfway there, realizing she plans to separate him from his brother, he stops, twisting out of her grip and looking back at Dean, who is half-crouched, looking ready to murder someone. "The hell do you think you're doing with him?" Dean says, low and dangerous.

The two girls lock eyes for a moment before the one near Sam takes his arm again, with a bit more force this time, and once again begins guiding him out of the room.

Sam glances down at her, then over at the other girl, standing near the front of the room. Neither one appears to be armed, but neither is he, and based on the skill with which they were attacked earlier, there's a good chance they could take him down if he tried to fight them now. Plus, there were still two other girls at the club, whom he assumes are somewhere outside the room. Even if he overpowered the two in the room and freed Dean, there was still little chance they could make it out undetected.

Concluding that his best option is simply to wait and look for a chance later, Sam walks along with the girl steering him. He hears Dean pulling frantically on his chains behind him. Sam glances helplessly back at his brother for a moment, before he's suddenly on the other side of the doorway and Dean is out of sight. The short-haired girl is still in the room with Dean, and as she backs into the doorway, Sam hears Dean yell, "Let him go, you bitch!" Before she too is out of Dean's sight, sliding the doors back into place.

The room on the other side of the 'dungeon' seems to be a storage area of some sort. It's full of files and boxes stacked floor to ceiling on large metal shelves, and Sam wonders if they're in an old warehouse of some sort. The "doors" to the room they were in are also shelves stacked with boxes, which have moved back into place, hiding the room where Dean is still sitting.

Short-hair leads the way through the room, now, with the other girl still directing Sam. They walk past dozens of shelves to another door, this one plain metal, and Short-hair opens this one and motions Sam and his guide through.

They close the door behind them on the other side. Ahead is a long hallway, with a polished wood floor and paintings hanging on the walls. The place is more confusing by the minute: it can't be a warehouse, not with a hallway like this. This looks more like someone's old cozy retirement home.

Sam starts forward, expecting them to go down the hallway, but realizes the girls aren't walking with him. He turns back to see Short-hair leaning against the door, eyes wide. Sam's 'guide' is standing next to her, still facing Sam, also looking vaguely shell-shocked. A wide grin unfurls on her face and she turns toward Short-hair, bringing a hand to her mouth.

"Oh my god, Ali," she says, shaking with silent laughter. Sam stands down the hall a few steps, dumbfounded, wondering if perhaps they hit him harder on the head than he thought.

Short-hair, Ali, puts a hand up to the other girl's face and turns her head away in mock disgust. "Shut up, Kate." She shakes her head, biting her lip, and then straightens up again and begins moving toward Sam. "I'm going to kill him when he gets home," she says. Sam wonders who she's talking about. Are there more of them?

The other, Kate, giggles, and follows. When they get to Sam, she puts her hand on his arm again. "Sorry," she says yet again. "For…"

"All this crap," Ali says, moving past them and down the hallway.

Kate sighs. "Yeah, that." She lets go of Sam's arm and starts down the hallway, motioning for Sam to follow her. "Please, come upstairs. We'll explain. At least we'll try."

Sam follows warily down the hallway, around a corner, down a shorter hallway, and around another corner, into a room unlike any he's ever seen.

From the lack of windows, he'd say they're underground. The room he's standing in seems to be some sort of combination of living room and library. There's a large wooden table in the center, piled high with books and papers, and there are bookshelves lining the walls. There's a refrigerator in one corner, a ping-pong table in another, and a worn, circular plush rug next to the table, with what looks like Legos scattered on it. There are three different laptops sitting on the table, and a large tropical plant of some sort in a pot against one wall.

One more of the club girls is sitting on the table. She looks around seriously as Sam enters, then whips her head back toward the hallway opposite the one he just came down, her wavy blonde hair swinging around her shoulders. "Kathy!" She yells. "Get in here!"

There's a muffled answering yell from down the hallway, and Sam hears a door slam. The last of the four club girls, Kathy apparently, comes running down the hallway and into the room where they're gathered. She stares at Sam, who looks away.

Kate moves forward to the table, pulls out a chair, and motions to Sam. "Can you sit? I'd like to look at your head if you don't mind."

Warily, Sam moves forward and drops into the offered chair. Kate moves and he hears her voice from above his head. "Since they're awake now, we'll probably need a bit of warning when they get back," she says. _So they are expecting someone else_, Sam thinks.

Kathy moves forward from the entrance to her hallway. "I can set up the proximity alarm, that's probably easiest." She turns to the blonde on the table next to Sam. "Mary, can you set the sensors?"

"Sure," the blonde says, sliding off the table and heading with Kathy through a doorway behind Sam to the next room.

There's a few seconds of silence in which Sam can hear Kathy and Mary moving and clanking in the next room, then what sounds like an old computer starting up, and then suddenly from a different room to his side, a faint beeping alarm.

"Oh, my noodles!" Ali says, moving past Sam, who quirks an eyebrow at her childish substitute for swearing, before realizing she is literally talking about noodles—the beeping is a timer, and the next room must be a kitchen of some kind.

Kate snorts from above him, then her hands slide into his hair again, lightly prodding at the back of his head. He jerks a tiny bit, and she mutters a soft apology before moving down again, pushing his head forward a bit and pulling at the neck of his shirt so she can see where she jabbed him in the back with her elbow.

She just pushes lightly at the spot, hissing in sympathy. He can feel the bruise starting to form there. "Sorry about that, again," she says. "I jumped a bit off, landed just a bit too far from you, and you turned faster than I thought. You were supposed to go down quick like Dean, not get hurt."

Sam snorts disbelievingly. "You bashed him over the head with a gun," he says flatly.

"Fastest and easiest way for us mere mortals to knock someone out without any real complications," she replies, "unless you've got some kind of drugs and darts, neither of which we happened to have on hand."

Sam puzzles for a moment over the 'mere mortals' comment, absently rotating his sore shoulder. It doesn't go unnoticed by Kate, who lays a hand on it. "What happened?"

"Sign," he says simply, and feels her hesitate for a moment before her grip on him tightens a fraction.

"Ah. Sorry." There's the apology again, but Sam doesn't find it any easier to believe than the last few. Kate is suddenly acting like she is his friend, but despite the strange homey appearance of wherever the hell they are, as far as Sam is concerned, it's still a prison, and these girls are still his enemies. They'd better not think he's going to forget the fact that his brother is still chained up in the basement.

Kate is reaching around to his front now, undoing the top couple buttons of his shirt, then sliding it over his shoulder to see where it impacted the sign. "Jeez, Sam," she whispers, poking at the area. Sam twitches at the use of his name, but isn't surprised that she knows it, seeing as she apparently knows him.

There's a moment's pause while Kate riffles through a first aid kit that's sitting open on the table—when did that get there?—and then a sting when she swipes at his shoulder with an alcohol-soaked gauze pad. He must have broken the skin. Then Kate is cleaning the wound quickly and taping a bandage in place over it. "Doesn't need stitches, thank god, because if I did them Dean would probably insist on redoing them himself later," she mumbles to herself as she works.

Unsettled by her insight into Dean's habits, though he supposes anyone who has observed them for any period before would know about Dean's furious over-protectiveness when it comes to Sam, he hurriedly pulls his shirt back up and buttons it as soon as she is done.

She sits up on the table and slides over in front of him, watching him keenly for a moment. "Look," she says, sighing when he glares at her. "I am sorry about all of this. We don't exactly know what's happening either."

Sam meets her eyes. He doesn't see a lie in them, just the same confusion he's feeling. He wills himself not to soften too much toward her—he's been tricked before by someone pretending not to know what's going on, he thinks, remembering Ava—and he looks her up and down.

Kate's hair is the same light brown as Sam's, falling to about her elbows. Her eyes are a bright hazel, her nose a bit pointed. Overall, she is actually very beautiful, and combined with her slight but curvy body, long legs, and acrobatic ability, Sam would bet she gets a lot of tips dancing like she does in clubs.

Exactly the type of person who knows how to manipulate people, he thinks. If she is a hunter, then traits like hers would make her good at getting information out of people, and with practice, she would certainly be a great liar. Renewing his promise not to trust her easily, Sam looks her in the eyes again. "Then tell me what you do know."

She leans back. "We're hunters, which you probably figured by now," she says, tipping her head toward him. "We—it was a normal job. Perfectly normal. We'd already finished, and we'd just stopped by the club one last time, figured we'd pick up some extra money for one last performance—"

"So you'd been there before," Sam interrupts.

"Yeah, we were in that town for four days, taking care of a particularly bad haunting. Bunch of kids, drowned in a school bus that drove into the river thirty years ago because nobody stopped to help them. But we finished it, got rid of every one of them, we checked. And there's nothing else at all strange about the town," she adds, before Sam can speak up.

"We like to set up at a club or a bar, anywhere that has a stage, we get decent tips singing and dancing, and people talk to you more if you're 'established' there. We'll drop in a few times between researching and stuff.

"And this time, we were there, just like every other, and we get done and I look over and _you _are standing right there watching me." She gives him a frustrated, confused look.

Sam stiffens. "You know us?" he asks suspiciously.

"Took me a minute," she mutters quietly, then adds more loudly, "I know you don't belong here. We all know it."

She pauses and looks at Sam expectantly, as though waiting for him to respond to that. He tilts his head, raising his eyebrows, and her eyes widen.

"Don't tell me… you don't know?" She sucks in a breath at his continued confusion. "Sam… what happened before you and Dean came into the club? What were you doing?"

Sam tenses and sits up straight in the chair, staring Kate down. He contemplates lying, but decided to go with the truth. "We don't know. We woke up in the park across the street, couldn't remember anything before that, and headed into the club." He says it accusingly, glaring at her.

"Oh my god," she breathes. "You have no idea where you are, do you?"

"Should I?" Sam is getting agitated.

"No, you shouldn't. Not if you just woke up and headed right to us. God, we had no idea you'd only been there a few minutes. That's… that's good, actually. Really good." She's staring at him contemplatively now. "Well, at the very least, you'd never seen the place before, right?"

Sam hesitates. "Right. Never been there, as far as I know."

"So obviously something happened to you, something weird, and that's why you were suddenly there, with no idea how you got there."

Sam just glares.

"So you know you didn't belong there, right?"

Sam shakes his head, wondering what the point is. "Yeah?"

"Look, again, I'm sorry about this. But please, trust us, we're on your side. We knew you didn't belong there, it was obvious to us from the minute we saw you. We were going to try to come over, talk to you, find out how you got there and what the hell was happening, but you bolted."

Her pleading tone is getting to Sam, and though he still doesn't trust her, he nods and listens.

"We followed you, we were watching you from that building, because apparently you weren't very fond of us, and then we found out why. We heard you talking, we were listening in trying to find out how long you'd been there and what you might have done, and we heard you say you thought we were… shifters, or monsters or something. And we knew there was no way we were going to be able to talk to you.

"We needed to get you out of there, and somewhere safe and _private,_ where we could talk to you, as soon as possible. So we, ah, you know," she raises her hands helplessly, "attacked you." She cringes at the word. "It was supposed to be really fast, just drop and knock you out, then get the hell out of there. But I miscalculated. I'm sorry you got hurt, I really am."

She's now looking at him earnestly, and he takes a deep breath and rotates his shoulders, trying to make sense of what she's telling him. "So what, then… you knocked us out, dragged us… here, wherever this is, and then chained us up in the dungeon?" He asks incredulously.

She gives him a guilty smile, but a voice from the doorway next to him speaks. "Yeah, we did." It's Ali, standing there now holding two plates of pasta with vegetables on the sides. She moves forward and hands one to Kate.

Kate pokes at it with the fork and makes a face. "You'd better have cooked mine."

Ali rolls her eyes. "Sorry you like your veggies limp and pathetic, you Americanized, tasteless brat."

Kate picks up a piece of broccoli and flicks it at Ali. "Sorry you're obsessed with undercooking things just because the _French_ do it, you pretentious, stuffy, _al dente_ snot."

Sam can't help but chuckle, and suddenly finds he's feeling much more amicable toward the girls. He knows that monsters and demons and bad humans sometimes have friends and lives and do normal things too, but he finds it a lot more difficult to be angry and suspicious of people who throw broccoli at each other.

At his chuckle, they both turn to look at him, smiling now. "We did," Ali repeats, "and like Kate has probably said about a hundred times now, we're sorry. Like she said, we didn't know what was going on either, only that you were suddenly there and that you should _not _have been there, and for all we knew _you _were the shifters, or demons, or something awful like that."

"So we got you back and put you down there, just in case." Kate continues. "But then, while you were still out, we tried everything. Rubbed your hands with silver, splashed you with a little holy water, sprinkled on some salt, all the others and the usual tests…."

"But it was all negative. So we concluded that you were just _you_, normal humans, and that you were probably just as lost and confused as us, and also…"

"That you were probably going to be _pissed_."

"Hence the chains, still," says Ali. "Together, you two can be seriously dangerous, particularly Dean when it comes to you. I don't think he'd be much up to listening to the people who knocked out him and his little brother and dragged them down here."

"And sorry for separating you," Kate adds, "we thought you might be a bit more likely to listen to us up here. If we kept you together, you probably would have just attacked us."

Sam nods, that's entirely true. If they'd freed both him and Dean in the dungeon downstairs, there was no doubt in Sam's mind that the brothers would have attacked them the second they had the chance. And even if they had then once again been overpowered and locked back up, Sam thought he would have been much less willing to come upstairs away from his brother and listen to Kate talk after being attacked and beaten and chained up twice.

"Earlier," Sam says, before Kate can speak again, "you said 'safe.' You said you wanted to get us out of that town and somewhere safe…. Are we in danger?"

At this, Kate and Ali exchange meaningful glances. "Possibly," Ali says carefully, "but not too much more than usual, hopefully. What we really meant was that we needed to keep _you _from doing something… bad."

Sam blinks. "Bad, how?"

There's another hesitation. "Look," Kate says, "like we said, you didn't belong there. We don't know how you got there, but it's not good. We needed to keep you from causing damage accidentally. And until we know more about how you got there, we can't really tell you any more."

Getting frustrated again, Sam leans forward. "Why not?"

"Because telling you too much could cause more damage than we could possibly fix," Kate says simply. "Please, believe us when we tell you this. We are just as confused as you are, and just to be safe, until we know more, we just can't say much more. We don't know if this is our fault, but it's our responsibility to fix it."

Sam sits back. "Well, when will you 'know more?'"

Kate glances behind her, into the next room, where Kathy and Mary disappeared to earlier. "We're waiting for some friends of ours to get back from a hunt that they've been on, and one of them has some, um, experience with this sort of stuff. He should be able to tell us more, and maybe how you got to that town." Kate leans down and looks at Sam seriously. "Do you believe us, Sam? Can you trust that we are not your enemies, that we want to help you?"

Sam locks eyes with her and stares for probably a full minute before finally answering. "Yes, I believe you."

Ali and Kate look incredibly relieved, and Kate sits back, picks up her forgotten plate, and begins eating. From next to him, Ali gestures to her own. "Sorry, would you like some? I don't think you've eaten in a while."

Sam almost declines, but he _is_ very hungry, and he nods slightly. Ali disappears back into the kitchen, and a few moments later, Kathy and Mary come back from the other room. "Sensors are set," Mary says, glancing at Sam. "We all good?"

Kate bites her bottom lip as Ali comes back in carrying a plate full of pasta and vegetables, which she hands to Sam. "Sam is. So, big question," she starts, and the other three girls flinch slightly, all looking back toward the hallway that led back to the dungeon, "who wants to go get Dean?"


	3. Chapter 3

Hey, sorry for the gap in updating (yet again. This is a becoming a bad habit of mine), but finals are over now so I'm a bit less stressed. Of course I can't guarantee that means I'll be posting here more often, because for some reason writer's block strikes me hard and I only really write when I have some serious urge to. Like now. Not to mention this whole present tense thing is difficult for me, but it'd be weird to change it now, and I'm doing it to get better, not to skip out halfway through. So on we go.

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><p>It ends up being Ali and Mary who go down to retrieve Dean from the dungeon, while Kate fetches Sam a plate of food. Before going down, they had discussed the best way to retrieve Dean, and agreed on two armed "escorts." Surprisingly, they asked Sam beforehand what he thought the best option for peacefully getting Dean upstairs was.<p>

Knowing that the only thing that would get Dean to cooperate was the threat of not seeing Sam, he told them to go down without him.

Sam and Kate are enjoying their food and actually having a somewhat normal conversation—Sam did learn a thing or two about cooking from Jess—when he hears the low "Sammy" from the doorway across from him and looks over.

Dean's face is murderous, but Sam sees the relief in his eyes at seeing his brother unharmed. He hopes Dean didn't cause trouble; he doesn't want to see Dean hurt and has no doubt these girls are willing to use force to subdue him—yet, somehow, he doesn't sense danger from them. Ali and Mary are both carrying guns, but they are relaxed in their hands, pointing at the floor rather than his brother's head, and Sam's hunter instincts, normally haywire in a hostage situation of any sort, are unusually quiet. He is finding that he really does trust these girls, and believes what they are saying, even if their cryptic talk about him and Dean "not belonging there" are annoying as hell.

Sam sets his plate on the table next to Kate's hip. He smiles at Dean, attempting to convey that everything is okay, but he can see Dean is not buying it. Kathy pulls out another chair next to Sam's, but Dean pointedly ignores her, striding over to stand behind Sam. Sam can feel Dean's eyes on his bandaged shoulder and hears Dean's low growl.

The tension is building a little too thick for his liking. Sam knows Dean won't listen to any of the girls. Resisting the urge to roll his eyes, he hooks his left foot around the empty chair and pulls it even closer. Twisting in his seat, he gives his brother his best annoyed face. "Dean. Sit."

Dean huffs but finally moves to sit in the chair, turning it so that he can face Sam and look him up and down appraisingly. Some of the tension in the room diffuses, and Kate starts to say something, but Dean interrupts her, asking Sam pointedly, "you okay?"

"Yeah, fine," Sam says impatiently, and turns to Kate. "What was that?" he asks.

Kate takes a deep breath that's not quite a sigh. "Look, Dean, we're sorry about all this—"

"Save it," Dean interrupts again, glaring at her. "You got a reason for suddenly acting like you're our buddies, or you just gonna get straight to it and kill us?"

"We have no reason or desire to kill you."

"Bull," Dean says, temper building again. "We black out for no damn reason and wake up in some park with no idea what happened, and then you attack us, chain us up, and now you expect us to believe you're just little angels?" Dean has half-risen out of his seat now. Kate leans forward and starts to speak, but Dean again interrupts her. "What the hell are you?"

Kate leaps off the table. Not expecting the sudden, passionate movement from the previously quiet girl, Sam jerks back in his chair. Kate is now standing face-to-face with Dean, and though his brother has probably six inches on her, something about her demeanor seems to dwarf even Dean.

"Sit back down, you presumptuous, ignorant _child_." Her voice is venomous. Sam's eyes widen as she steps even closer to Dean. "You have _no_ clue what's going on here, and you have neither the reason nor the right to be acting like an insufferable brat. You've done nothing but threaten and refuse to listen to us so far. God, it's amazing you've lasted this long as a hunter. What do you do, barge into every hunt with no information, assuming the worst and killing anything you don't like? Never stop to gather any information first, never look at the big picture? You never wonder what the hell everything means, what the small things are leading up to, what they might indicate could happen in the future? Oh yeah, that's right, you don't, which is why you've made rookie mistakes, why you have no clue when shit suddenly goes down, why you got Sam_ killed_!"

Everything seems frozen in time. Up until now, Dean had been bristling with anger, but with that last sentence, his eyes widen, his breath hitches. Sam too seems frozen in place for a moment, not even breathing, overwhelmed with memories of Yellow Eyes, of finally realizing, too late, what his visions had meant, of knowing the Demon's plans only too late, of dying, of realizing what Dean did for him, of the last nine months of looking for a way out, looking for a way to stop Dean's deal, Dean's death, Dean going to Hell for him…

Dean is practically vibrating with energy. Sam waits for it, for a fight to break out, but Kate leans in even closer, eyes locked unblinkingly on Dean's. "Try it," she whispers. "Just try it. I can kick your ass into next week and chain you back up down there, and we'll stay up here with your brother and figure out how the hell to help you two on our own. But you know I'm right, and you know you've got nothing here, no clue what's going on, and you need our help. So sit. Down. _Now_."

And, to Sam's astonishment, there's no punch, no fight.

With a visible effort, Dean unclenches his fists, takes a step back, and sinks back down into his chair. Sam can practically hear his brother's teeth grinding, and he's sure Dean's jaw will be sore for the next few days with how tightly he has it clenched shut, but he stays silent while Kate moves back to lean against the table where she had been sitting before.

There's another minute of extremely tense silence, and then Kate leans back father against the table and her eyes shift to Sam. "Like I was saying before, there's not much we can tell you, not before we know more, not before our friend gets here and can help. But we might be able to at least gather some information about what happened to you, how you ended up in that park."

Sam nods, and sees Dean's head turn to scan the other three girls. "It wasn't you." It isn't quite a question, more a statement demanding verification.

Dean's arms are crossed, but his eyes are trained on the floor, either humbled by Kate's threats to him or angry at her for taming him. She gives him a look that's somewhere between annoyance and amusement, but answers nonetheless.

"No, it wasn't us. Like we told Sam, we had no idea you were there until you showed up in the club where we were performing. But as soon as we saw you, we knew something was wrong, so we followed you, and when we heard you saying we might be shifters, we realized the only way we were going to get you out of there quickly was by, ah, force." She shifts slightly, opening her mouth and then closing it again, as though restraining herself from apologizing yet again.

Dean still appears to be attempting to burn holes in the floor with his eyes, and Sam decides he needs to be the one to do the rational talking. He looks back up at Kate curiously. "So, you keep saying that we 'don't belong here.' I know," he holds up a hand to forestall them repeating it, "you can't tell us much more, or whatever. But can you at least tell us where 'here' is?"

Kate opens and closes her mouth again, exchanging meaningful and slightly uncomfortable glances with the other three.

It's Mary who speaks. She has been staring at the back of Dean's head for the past few minutes, and continues even as she talks. "The town we found you in was in southern Wisconsin, but we, you know, took you home. Right now, we're in, ah, Kansas."

Sam stiffens and sees Dean glance over at him. "What do you mean, you 'took us home?'"

Mary tilts her head and her eyes finally shift to Sam. "Home," she gestures around the room, "you know, where we live. This is where we live. Um…"

"Oh. Yeah, sorry." Sam feels some of the tension drain out of him and Dean also visibly relaxes. He had worried that they meant Lawrence, that these strange girls who knew Sam and Dean, who apparently knew what had happened at Cold Oak and, Sam was willing to bet, knew about Dean's deal, had for some reason dragged the brothers back to their original home, to where everything had begun.

There is another moment of silence while Sam contemplates his mother's death and the 'normal' lives that had been ripped from them.

Suddenly, a high-pitched alarm sounds from the next room, and Sam hears the whirring of old machinery turning on. All four girls leap up and then turn wide eyes on each other.

"They're back," says Kathy.

"Shit," Kate elaborates. "Um, did we really… think about how to break the news here?"

Dean is now standing, too, having leapt out of his seat when the alarms went off. Sam warily picks himself up as well.

Mary runs into the next room and silences the alarm, while Ali and Kathy turn to the brothers.

"Um, sorry, we need to get you… not here." Kathy begins pushing at Sam, herding him down the hallway opposite the one that leads to the dungeons, while Ali moves toward Dean.

"What—" Dean starts, but Ali gives him a firm shove.

"We'll explain in a minute, please, we just… we need a chance to explain what's happening to our friend before he sees you."

Dean grumbles, but perhaps remembering Kate's earlier threats, allows himself to be pushed down the hallway.

This hall is lined with doors and a few paintings. About half of the doors are decorated with stick-on letters or nameplates; Sam sees "Ali," "Mary," and "Katherine" before Ali flings open an unadorned gray door about halfway down and Kathy shoves him through it after Dean.

"We'll be right back, I promise, just, _please_, for the love of god, _stay here_," Kathy pleads, then closes the door.

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><p>I didn't really like this chapter. That is part of why it took me so long to write. Bleh. But it is finally done, and I can get on, yaaaaay. I'm writing the next one right now, so it shouldn't be too horribly long this time!<p> 


	4. Chapter 4

Hey, thank you _so _much Vettip for that amazing long review! I'm so thankful to you for taking the time to make it that long, I absolutely love to read about what specifically you liked and what little details you thought were good and just everything, I'm so excited. I like your predictions, actually that would be really cool, but unfortunately I fear this story will be going in a very different direction than you think. I do hope you still like it. It's a personal headcanon of mine and I've always wanted to get a chance to have these characters interact without changing the actual canon material (which I will do, I have a plan). I do want some advice from those of you reading, though: the main part of this story is actually going to be feelings-based, a lot of talking and some angsting and some emotional hurt/comfort. But should I include some actual action and possibly some physical h/c? Not sure. I have action stories planned out for the future (specifically Framing Innocence, which is supposed to have a lot of it and which I really want to get back into, but just… the whole actual-canon-season-9 thing is throwing me off the mood. But I digress), but I'm not sure if I should leave all that to those and keep this one mostly emotional. Let me know of you have an opinion!

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><p>Sam turns to give Dean a bewildered look, but his brother is already looking around the room, assessing.<p>

The room is incredibly plain, grey walls and a thin, dusty brown carpet on the floor. There are no windows, which Sam attributes to his earlier assumption that they are underground. Apart from a generic bed, empty closet, and bare nightstand, the room is empty. It gives the impression of an empty hotel or dorm room, waiting to be filled.

Dean has moved to the closest wall and is running a hand along it as though searching for a way out, and Sam rolls his eyes. "Dude, you don't have to act like we're hopelessly trapped. They didn't even lock the door."

Sam's voice seems to end whatever trance Dean was in, and his brother's eyes snap to him. All at once, Dean straightens and bristles with violent energy.

"What the _hell, _Sam?" He hisses, and Sam steps back, genuinely confused.

It only seems to aggravate Dean, who steps forward and grabs Sam's shoulders roughly. "What did they do to you, huh?"

"What—Dean, I'm f—"

"Don't you dare tell me you're fine," Dean growls, giving him a slight shake. "Did you forget what the hell's happening here? What, because they gave you some food and said '_sorry'_"—he pitches the last word up in an irritating imitation of one of the girls—"you decided they're our friends? Have you lost your god damned _mind_?"

Sam pauses for a beat, staring at Dean in mixed shock and anger, hurt that his brother doesn't seem to trust his judgment at all. He shakes Dean's hands from his shoulders and sidesteps him angrily.

"No, Dean, Jesus. I haven't decided they're our 'friends,' and I'm not just trusting them for no reason."

Dean opens his mouth to interrupt and Sam cuts him off. "Would you listen to me for once?"

Dean's eyes widen, but he steps back again and shuts his mouth, glaring at Sam in silent acquiescence.

Sam takes a breath to calm himself. "Look, they explained better to me than they did to you, and I don't think they're dangerous. But it's not just that," he says a little louder, forestalling Dean, who looks about ready to punch him, "what are we gonna do, Dean? Try and fight them? In case you haven't noticed, they stripped everything off us. They're armed, and we're not; and they're well trained, better than us." Dean scoffs and Sam gives him a dirty look. "Come on, man, you know it's true. They snuck up on us like pros in that alley, and they took us down in about twenty seconds. There's four of them and two of us, and now their 'friend' is back, which actually sounded like more than one 'friend' if you ask me, so we're even more outnumbered."

Sam's getting more and more exasperated, and Dean just looks at him like he's lost his mind. Sighing, he finally admits, "Dean, doesn't it freak you out, that they—that they know about me, about how I d—" the word catches in his throat for a moment and he has to swallow before he finishes softly, "how I died?"

Dean stiffens at the reminder, but his eyes soften for just a moment before his expression hardens again. "Yeah, how the hell do they know about that?"

"Dean, do you think they know… about your deal?" The words are barely above a whisper as he gives voice to his greatest fear about the situation.

His brother turns to him. "I don't know. But they know more than they should, either way. We—"

Dean cuts off as footsteps sound outside in the hall. A moment later, there is a short knock and the door swings partially open. Kate slides in, keeping the door mostly closed behind her, hiding whoever is behind it. "Hey. Thanks, for waiting. Um…" She looks nervously behind her, then back at Sam and Dean, and then finally steps out of the way.

The door swings the rest of the way open, admitting a man. It's somewhat anticlimactic, Sam admits to himself; he kind of expected something superhuman or spectacular, or possibly that he would recognize the mysterious "friend" of the girls. But this is just an ordinary man, as far as he can tell. The stranger is tall, though not quite reaching the level of Sam or Dean, and dressed plainly. He has short, dark hair styled somewhat conservatively, and bright blue eyes. Sam's guess would place him in his early forties.

The one unusual thing about the man is his shocked expression; he is staring at Sam and Dean with his mouth slightly open, eyes wide in surprise. He looks Dean over with the air of one examining a dear friend back from the dead, and then does the same to Sam. When his gaze lingers for a moment on Sam's face, Sam feels himself shiver and squirms uncomfortably. The movement doesn't go unnoticed by Dean, who shifts almost imperceptibly closer to him.

Kate also shifts awkwardly next to the man, then shrugs. "I told you," she says.

The man cocks an eyebrow and turns slightly to address her without tearing his eyes from the brothers. "You didn't lie." He takes a step forward and his gaze shifts to Sam again. "You said they just… 'showed up' at the end of your hunt?"

Kate is looking at Sam now as well. "Woke up a little ways from where we were and came straight into the club. They don't remember anything before that. We haven't, you know, told them anything. We weren't sure, ah, what might... we could have done damage, or... whatever. We just... we wanted to wait for you first."

The stranger looks again over to Dean, then steps toward him and reaches a hand out.

Dean jerks backward and his hand comes up defensively. "Woah, buddy, what the hell do you think you're doing?"

"I won't hurt you. Please. I just need to touch you."

"Woah, wait, what—" Dean starts again, but the man's hand has already reached him. The man lays three fingers on Dean's forehead, and there is a moment of awkward silence while Dean looks supremely uncomfortable and the man stares at the floor with a look of intense concentration on his face.

After a minute, he removes his hand and looks up with a puzzled frown. Moving to Sam, he repeats the procedure. Sam also jerks back instinctually from the touch, but allows it. When the man's hand comes in contact with him, Sam feels something strange, like a tiny shiver running through his body.

When Sam is also released, the man stands still for a moment, frowning at the wall. Kate, who has been watching the entire time from next to the door, speaks up. "So what do you think?"

The man turns his head toward her, then back to Sam and Dean again. He opens and closes his mouth once before finally speaking cautiously. "Your caution in not revealing anything was wise, but… unnecessary. This is not Sam and Dean Winchester."

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><p>Cookies for anyone who can guess what's happening! I'm liking this a bit more, now, and we're getting into the fun parts soon here. I'll be trying to update often!<p> 


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